The New York Times’ David Brooks, who is often viewed skeptically by movement conservatives because of his occasional praise of President Obama, defended his ideological convictions in an interview with The Daily Beast’s Howard Kurtz posted late Sunday night.

“If you define ‘conservative’ by always supporting the Republican candidate, or believing that tax cuts are the correct answer to all problems, then I guess I don’t fit that agenda,” Brooks said. “But I do think I’m part of a long-standing conservative tradition, which has to do with Edmund Burke, which is be cautious, don’t think you can do things by government planning and Alexander Hamilton, which used government as a tool to give people the power to compete in a capitalist economy.

“These are ancient conservative traditions,” Brooks continued. “It’s not like using government to create equality like liberals want. So if you put me in front of the AARP, or you send me to the Democratic convention, I’m like ‘I’m not one of those people.’”

Kurtz asked Brooks about his conservative detractors, and Brooks said his reaction to the criticism largely depends on where it’s coming from.

“It depends on who it is from,” Brooks said. “They say, ‘You’re wanting to go to dinner parties in D.C.,’ all that kind of stuff — I actually don’t go to all that many dinner parties and, those that I do are with my friends. So if it’s from like a loon, I don’t mind it. I get a kick out of it. If it’s from Michelle Malkin attacking, I don’t mind it.”

“When you get people who are thoughtful, who are criticizing you, some of my former colleagues at The Weekly Standard, then it bothers you,” he added. “And of course what really bothers you — I don’t mind liberals praising me, but when it’s the really partisan liberals, you get an avalanche of love. It’s like — I’ve got to rethink this.”

WATCH:

Although Malkin’s website Twitchy pointed the clip out late Sunday evening, Malkin herself did not respond to The Daily Caller’s request for comment.

UPDATE: Malkin tells The Daily Caller being called a “loon” preferable to being a “phony conservative”:

I’d rather be a “loon” and a Tea Party extremist than the phony conservative bauble at the New York Times who was responsible for helping his man-crush Barack Obama cover up the trillion-dollar-stimulus fraud. See my column: